WPF and Silverlight Intro

I’m attending VS Live this week, in Orlando Florida. This is my first VS Live event, and so far so good, my first few sessions balanced a fair amount of theory, substance and [working] demos. On Monday, I attended Billy Hollis’ WPF and Silverlight pragmatic introduction.

Silverlight (and WPF) seem to be getting lots of attention these days, reflected by the solid crowd turnout in the session, filling nearly all 100+ chairs! Now, I haven’t done “design” work in several years, I do force myself to learn new things rather often, today, it was silverlight.

I’ve met Billy before, from the conference circuit and was prepared to rollup my sleeves with solid technical content, and I wasn’t disappointed. Billy showcased several demos, 3rd party as well as his own, many with full source code availability for the audience to comb over. Equally impressive was an WPF application he’s working on, as his knowledge on the subject was very diverse.

Now, I don’t have any immediate needs to use WPF or Silverlight, but it has sparked my interest and I feel have a jump-off point, for when the need does arise. For those interested, jump right into Silverlight 2, and save yourself some headaches. Download the demos/sample applications, install blend and get intimate with xaml if you intend to become effective.